Knox verdict means no ‘Perugia’ park in Seattle – for now

A day after the city announced that a new Capitol Hill park will be named Perugia – in honor of Seattle’s Italian sister city – the Parks and Recreation Department announced Thursday morning that the name has been shelved.

“Due to community concerns about the naming of Perugia Park on the heels of the recent verdict in the criminal case involving Seattle resident Amanda Knox, we will temporarily shelve the naming process for this park,” said Tim Gallagher, the superintendent of the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department.

“We will take up the process again in the spring.”

Knox, a Seattle native and University of Washington student, was tried and convicted of murder in Perugia earlier this month.

On Wednesday, the city announced that its Park Naming Committee had unanimously recommended that the new .22-acre Capitol Hill park will be named “Perugia” in honor of Seattle’s “longstanding relationship” with the Italian city.

But Parks spokeswoman Joelle Hammerstad said the department began getting calls.

“We were getting a lot of calls, mostly from the media saying that they had been getting calls,” Hammerstad said. She said some reporters described their callers as “outraged,” while other reporters were outraged themselves.

“It seems as though there’s a sensitivity about the city of Perugia in the community, and we don’t want to fan any flames,” she said. “We’ll just put it on hold and revisit the issue later.”

“We had worked very hard on this for some years,” James said. “These parks are physical symbols of these sister city relationships. They communicate friendship.”

He noted that Perugia had dedicated its “Orca Park” in honor of Seattle two years ago, in which Italian officials unveiled a park sculpture by noted Seattle sculptor Marvin Oliver.

“We don’t think a trial, or a criminal incident should define a city, any more than it should define our own city, where we have crime,” James said.

“We tried to separate the friendship and long-standing relationship of the two cities, from the trial, from Knox. But unfortunately, we have the media, and Knox and Perguia have become synonymous.”

The Capitol Hill park – at East John Street and Summit Avenue East – was acquired in 2007 with funding from the 2000 Pro Parks Levy and a matching grant from the King County Conservation Futures Tax. It will be developed into a neighborhood park and P-Patch.